It had been a really exhausting week for Nathan. Fueled by the decreasing numbers on the signs pointing him towards Bell Reach, he had barely slept or stopped to eat a proper meal, surviving on street-side fast food and a maximum of 5 hours of sleep each night he kept skating towards the destination he had been waiting to see for almost 2 years now. The lack of sleep didn't matter much to him however once he entered the city, since finally reaching it had substituted his fatigue with joy and awe.

Nathan had seen a few bigger cities along his journey, but none of them were as impressive to him as Bell Reach. He stopped on a small square, stepping on one end of his board to hold it by the other, pulled his earphones out of his ears, put them around his neck and took in the atmosphere, his eyes beaming with excitement and his teeth showing in the biggest grin. It was amazing, the high buildings, the billboards, the huge amount of traffic and most importantly the people. Nathan had gotten used to being around large groups of strangers, but Bell Reach's famous attitude towards powers was immediately apparent just from where he stood. Floating grocery bags, a child with 4 arms and one guy walking on a wall 2 meters above the other pedestrians, perfectly parallel to the floor and the best part was: Nobody cared! He wanted to jump and punch his fist in the air, but was stopped short by the hole in his stomach. His celebratory dance would have to wait until he didn't feel like passing out from hunger anymore. Scanning his immediate surroundings for a place to eat without success, he plugged his music back into his ears, dropped his skateboard back to the ground and rode it down the road that pointed towards the ocean, as it seemed to be downhill for the most part and that would mean he'd have to do less work accelerating.

After passing by approximately 6 overfilled Starbucks, Nathan had almost given up hope on finding a decent place to eat. Turning left onto another road because of some road works, he saw a fire engine race across the intersection two corners ahead of him. Speeding up his rhythmic kicking of the street he managed to hit two consecutive green lights and turned into the street, in which the large red truck had been to see a burning building and loads of police and firemen securing the perimeter. Instinctively Nathan picked up his skateboard and fastened it onto his backpack, running up closer to see if he could help. That's when he noticed the amount of like minded people, that were already taking hold of the situation. He wasn't used to having other people around that could solve these kinds of problems from his travels, but then again, this was Bell Reach, the superpower-central, so he should've expected as much. "Fires are a pain to navigate with my shadow vision anyway" he thought to himself and, not knowing how common this things would be here, decided to focus on eating something in case he needed his strength for any similar situations down the line. He kept looking over to the chaos on the other side of the street as he walked towards the, now clearly visible, beach. "With the amount of actual heroes around I'd probably have gotten in the way anyway" He thought, glancing back one more time and seeing a purple figure landing in front of a policeman. Although Nathan could've sworn, that she looked familiar to some degree, he turned back towards the beach and decided to set his course for what he assumed to be the side of an Asian restaurant at the end of the street.

Making his way into the very back of the building, David saw a woman pinned underneath a blackened metal shelf with her child next to her prone and defenseless form, his small hands trying to vainly claw through the metal in order to save her, and a young woman with short black, shaggy hair crouched down nearby, trying to free the trapped mother. Quickly giving the room a quick once over to make sure no rubble or debris would harm him or the trapped civilians, David allowed time to return to its normal flow. Bending over, he picked up the child, who kicked and screamed in a desperate attempt to free himself from the man's grasp, and turned towards the young woman.

"I'll get him to safety." He said through his bandana, nodding to the now coughing child. Focusing his will, David slowed the flow of time to a crawl once more and ran back towards the entrance. Upon setting foot outside, David rushed towards the paramedics that were just now arriving on the scene. Placing the boy in the arms of the nearest one, David sped up time just long enough to say, "Take care of him", before running back into the burning department store.

Erika had just reached out to grip the shelves in order to lift it up, when the boy’s sudden scream caused her to look in his direction. It would be a lie if she were to say that she wasn’t shocked to see that a man wearing a bandana had scooped up the child and a part of her was momentarily concerned until the words "I'll get him to safety." reached her ears.

She barely had time to give him an acknowledging nod before he disappeared into a grey blur (Super-speed perhaps? Awesome!). Pushing down her intense desire to fangirl over powers, she wasted no time in turning back to the more pressing matter at hand. Gripping the blackened metal of the shelf with her bare hands (an act that would have left others with serious burn-wounds) she poured all her strength into lifting it (the trick is to do it with your legs), immensely thankful for the small strength boost that came with her powers as she managed to lift the thing enough to enable the woman to be moved.

"Oh what I wouldn't do for a few hydrokinetics right now." Fringe mumbled to herself, swinging from building to building, circling the area to see if she couldn't pick out anyone suspicious. As her eyes squinted, the lenses on her mask became clearer, allowing her to see better. She'd just have to autopilot for right now while she searched the area. Hopefully she wouldn't swing into any buildings, or worse yet, the fire itself.

She didn't spot anyone that could look like a perp, much less a supervillain, but there was one thing that did catch her eye. Little tricks of the light. Warping and bending for only a millisecond in her vision. People there, people gone, or just little shimmers of light. She knew she wasn't fast enough to reach any of them with her current distance and speed, yet she had an idea of what to keep hey eyes peeled for.

And there it was.

Not even a fraction of a second. Her lenses, once opaque and solid, became completely transluscent. She needed all of her remarkable vision for this one. One of the shimmers flickered in her eyes again, and her focus honed in on it to reveal what she believed to be her target. A block away, a figure of obsidian, dressed in molten lights walked away from the scene without anyone batting an eye at them. In an instant, the vanished. The other lights in her eyes kept setting her off, but she knew that was her one and only target. However, whatever they were doing could not garuntee that she would be able to catch them. She needed help to get them, and they were already moving further and further away. Back to the building it was.

It was at this point that the building itself was starting to shudder. The heat, engulfing the building in flames, became hard to bare for people without specific powers to combat the heat or the smoke. But that didn't stop Fringe. She was still strong, incredibly so, and if she could zip in and out just to make sure people were out of the building, she'd be happy with the day.

David took a deep breath of fresh air and slowed time once again as he ran back into the burning building, weaving between falling beams, shelves, and ceiling tiles, all of which were bathed in flames. Making his way through the smoke, David eventually came back to the spot where the boy was earlier and, finding the now unconscious woman that was pinned under the shelf still lying in the same spot, knelt down to pick her up. Throwing her over his shoulder, David cast a quick glance over at the barely moving form of the other woman who was still holding up the blackened and twisted piece of metal somehow. If he had to guess, he would say that she had some combination of enhanced strength, a healing factor, or, just maybe, invulnerability. Of course now was not the time for thinking about such things.

He did have a life to save after all.

Letting his gaze linger on her for a little bit longer, David finally tore himself away from the mysterious power user and ran back through the slowly collapsing store. Once outside he released his hold on time and handed the passed out woman over to the on site paramedics. Everything seemed to be going well so far.

Until the sound of metal bending and breaking rent the air.

Feeling his blood run cold, David turned around and watched as the store slowly began to fall in on itself like some kind of wax statue that had been left out in the sun too long. Anyone who was left inside, powered or not, would have to get out of there soon or else they'd end up getting buried under a pile of smoldering rubble.

One moment, Erika was trying to find a way to position the shelf so that she’d be able to slide the woman out from under it then she blinked and poof, the woman was gone and a grey blur was disappearing out of her line of sight. A second passed where she owlishly gaped at the now unoccupied spot where the woman used to be before realisation hit her.

Letting the shelf fall with a clang, she looked in the direction the blur disappeared in, an amused smile hidden by her mask. Were she a lesser person, she might have been irritated at him, but as things were she is just happy that the woman and kid was safe and as she was not above laughing at herself, she is willing to admit that her expression when she saw that the woman was gone was probably hilarious. Her mirth however was short-lived as the rumbling sound of a building on the verge of complete collapse filled her ears.

Not wasting a second, her legs immediately started carrying her to the exit, her eyes peeled for anybody else still in the building as she went. Personally, the building collapsing in and of itself is something that she’s reasonably sure that she’d be able to survive, but the heat is already really intense and her mask wont protects her from the smoke forever, so suffocation if she ends up trapped is a real possibility and she is not about to go out that way. If her life is to end prematurely, it’ll be doing something totally epic, possibly fighting a really dangerous villain, she refuses to be taken out by a building-turned-bonfire!

Stumbling slightly over something, she quickly righted herself and gave a sigh of relief at the sign of the exit. Glancing around herself one last time to make sure nobody else was trapped in here, she made her way to the exit, running out just as the sound of crashing objects came from behind her, indicating that the roof had started falling in. A sigh of relief leaving her as she once again breathed in air that wasn't mostly full of smoke. That was a close one.

Peculiar.

Professor Devil took his sweet time arriving on the scene. With a swipe of his hand he could control the flames and bring it down, but the more he stood there and watched the building burn, the more he thought of this as strange. Middle of the day, and as far as he could tell, there didn't seem to be any point where the fire was simply growing. It just happened. Of course powers were involved, but he was more curious as to who, and what level of control they had over whatever had actually caused the fire in the first place.

The building was consumed in flames, crumbling and ready to topple over with heroes and maybe a civilian or two inside of it.

A hand went to the logo on his suit. "Patch me through to Feng. She's been itching to get into it, and this looks like a good scene for her to take action and investigate."

Feng was the girl from the government that the Bastion finally let into the facility to keep the authorities off their backs. It was a little compromise, though she didn't have access to everything the Bastion had. He would oversee everything. If anything went wrong, he would shut it down with a wave of the hand. For now, he just wanted to see how things played out.

Dr. Eileen Fang

---

As Eileen worked on her research, a small mechanical locust approached her and began speaking, "There's a fire in the city."

"Low priority, let the fire department handle it," Eileen said, waving Omniac's proxy away.

"But there are several vigilantes on the scene...including Professor Devil. In fact, he's calling you right now."

"What?! I mean, with his powers I suppose...but it's beneath him...pick it up!"

The locust switched channels and connected the line for Eileen. "Professor Devil? H-Hi! An honor! Umm...what's up...?"

---

Fifteen minutes later found Dr. Fang aboard a police chopper, hovering over the scene of the fire. She had received enough information to surmise that this was no accident, nor a simple arson, and she had a high enough of a position that she could requisition the use of police vehicles if she was carrying out a government investigation. With no place for the helicopter to land, Eileen simply opened the massive briefcase she had brought with her as a swarm of mechanical locusts flooded out of it. Fortunately, due to the nature of helicopter blades, to maintain flight, air was pushed down, so the expensive little machines didn't get sucked up into the blades and destroyed. With the case thus lightened, Eileen strapped it awkwardly to her backpack, which she wore over her lab coat and proceeded to climb down a rope ladder. Once on the ground, she dropped the case and took off her backpack in order to pull out a laptop that was synced to the swarm of robotic locusts. She set them to perform wide-spectrum sweeps of the area to locate any clues of the perpetrator. As she was doing this, she meandered over to Professor Devil's side.

For quite a few moments after Jessie had spoken, Zoey could only stare at her friend with barely hidden confusion. From the slight furrow of her brows, to how her spine had become rigidly straight as her steel-blue gaze flicked away and back repeatedly.

"...Fast casual?" The rich girl finally mouthed, barely voicing it aloud. Thankfully her puzzlement didn't last long as, rather than linger on wrapping her head around the restaurant - why have people wait to the side instead of someone easily bringing your food to you while you relaxed? - Zoey's mind switched tracks as Jessie's last words caught up with her. Immediately the redhead's gaze became focused, switching to look at the growing disaster caught on television. Someone had already shown up to help - someone like her, like Jessie, if she had to guess. From how that person dived into the building it seemed there were people to help. Just the thought sent adrenaline pumping through her chest, urging her to move.

It helped that out of the corner of her eye Professor Devil was exiting Little China.

"Right," Zoey finally said, a little low. She licked her painted lips before repeating it, stronger this time. "Right! The paper can wait - I'll meet you there?" Without waiting for an answer the tall young woman slid from the booth's bench. Almost absently she withdrew her wallet and flicked a bill on the table for a tip, despite having not actually ordered anything. Her feet were moving before the paper even hit the table top, fast-walking out of the place.

It took all of her ettiquete to not dive headfirst into her car, but soon Zoey had the door of the expensive car shut and locked. The side windows were already tinted near black, but a quick press of a dashboard button had the windshield darkening as well so that no prying eyes could see inside.

It was a bit cramped changing so quickly in a two-seater car, admittedly. Yet as soon as Zoey's outfit was changed - with the help of a set of second, shadowy arms - and the heavy mask wrapped around her lower face, it was just a matter of picking out a shadow from a nearby building to disappear.

As the burning building gave an almighty creak followed by a crash, it was inevitable that it started falling like dominos. Yet following the initial rumble, another was staved off. For anyone able to see in the building, it was as though the flickering shadows from the dancing flames seemed to become darker - more solid. As cracks appeared along the sides of it, the darkness from the building's own shadow stirred.

"With all that heat, it looks like you could all use a bit of shade!" Leaping from the shadows of one of the police cruisers, a pair of boots landed on the roof of the car. Bracing one foot against the flashing sirens, Grim lifted his arms - solid darkness sliding across them like a second skin. Mimicking his motion, pitch-black strips rose from the ground at the building's sides to lash out like great ribbons, bracing against the cracking, creaking brick.

"Fire chief," The voice changer built into Grim's mask came out almost a hundred percent perfect, deep and masculine as any natural male. It even conveniently hid the strain coloring Zoey's voice beneath it. "Might I suggest pulling your men back? I can give everyone enough time to clear the landing zone before this thing collapses - assuming my fellow costumed comrades have cleared the building!"

Grim even took a moment to use one hand to finger gun the strange lab coat wearing woman who arrived via helicopter, though he never dropped its raised position.

Jessie chuckled as her excitable friend took the bait, dropping a tip on the table and racing out of the restaurant. It wasn't that Jessie didn't want to help tutor Zoey, it was just that there were so many other things to do, and this would at least be exciting. Grabbing the money Zoey had dropped on the table, Jessie pocketed it before heading for the door. As soon as she'd cleared the threshold and stepped out into the open air, the technokinetic girl sent out a mental call, 'hearing' her prized invention respond with its own signal. Dropping her backpack onto a nearby bench, Jessie began to retrieve her supplies. Her goggles, designed to withstand high winds and give information on a dozen different spectrums. Her costume, the reddish-brown cloak with its orange hood. A click of her booted heels confirmed the magnets embedded inside were functioning. Grabbing a few padlocks, Jessie dropped the backpack to the side of the bench and locked it there, along with sealing its pouches. She had her own small security system built inside as well, so anyone trying to steal her stuff would have a nasty surprise.

Finally done getting ready, Jessie took off running in the direction of the fire. Her heart pounded in her chest as her boots pounded against the wooden slats of the boardwalk. Ahead was the railing leading to a ten foot drop to the street. As she approached, Jessie BLINKED out of her position and reappeared above the railing. Pushing off with her heels, she propelled herself into the air, gritting her teeth and willing her board to--

Catch her! The homebuilt hoverboard rocketed out from under the boardwalk where it had been following her and snapped to the magnets in her boots. Lightning Bug whooped excitedly and leaned forward, commanding the unique invention to rocket through the city streets until she could see the fire. Grim was here already, because of course she was. Jessie slowed her approach and flew the machine higher, getting a bird's eye view of the scene. It was chaos, with a dozen vigilantes ambling around, ducking in and out of the burning building as it threatened to collapse. Grim would be one of them, if she didn't have a friendly Bug in the sky.

"Lightning Bug to Grim, come in Grim." She said, keying on the communication link she'd built into her goggles and Grim's mask. "I've got eyes in the sky, a nice overview of our little campfire. Got a lot of competition today, you're gonna want to move fast before everyone else saves all the civilians." Jessie looked up at the circling helicopter and squinted as she realized there were some kind of small drones hovering around too. "Not to mention the government boys are here too, I'll be keeping an eye on them. No sense crossing Uncle Sam today, am I right? Let me know if you need anything, I'll be watching out of you."

Keying off the comm link, Lightning Bug reached out towards a nearby drone, sending it a mental signal to come closer. It quickly broke off from its patterned loop and settled on her outstretched hand. "Hey there, little buddy." She said, examining it closely. Let's find out where you come from... Bug began to probe into the complex computer programming of the drone, digging for where it came from and what it was doing. The process was slower than she'd like, there were layers of layers of encryption here that even her naturally aligned brain was having trouble parsing. Finally though, she had a breakthrough.

Dr. Fang

Surveillance Swarm

Bastion Liaison

Sh!t.

Pulling her mind out of the drone, Lightning bug looked around at the chaos below. There, beside Devil. That was likely Dr. Fang, with the laptop, getting live feeds form her drones. Live feeds that Lightning Bug was now caught on, tampering with one of said drones! She turned back to the tiny robot in her hand and grimaced. "Uh... Hi Dr. Fang! Sorry about that, just checking to see where the swarm of robots came from please don't arrest me I'm just trying to help!" She cried before tossing the locust-like robot back into the air and making a beeline for the other side of the burning building.

The chief relented control of the situation to the supers. After a look shared with the Bastion Representative of this little event, the fire chief thumbed his radio and spoke loud and clearly. "I want everyone out of that building as soon as possible. Everyone seems accounted for, they're going to handle the rest." He nodded to Professor Devil, who nodded back. His stance seemed wider, but he didn't strike and obvious pose. With his eyes fixed on the flames, he could feel the warmth not only on his skin, but also in his mind.

"Eileen, I'm glad your here." Professor devil didn't bat an eye when the young woman approached him. He still stared into the core of the fire, keeping it as still as he could without putting it out outright. "The fire is pretty much handled, but we're still looking out for the one behind all this. Is there any chance you could look for abnormal heat traces in the surrounding area?"

As the electronic swarm would learn from the ongoing scans, there were a number of small areas which seemed highly concentrated in lingering energy. Small pockets of extreme heat which were dying off quickly, as well as something else more peculiar. Bent light. The EM scans would have shown more pockets where energy levels were high, almost leaving a trail from one to another before those pockets seemed to stop in their tracks. Again, after that, the heat continued to be strangely high and concentrated.

As Eileen scanned the area, she picked up a trail, honing her drones to zero-in on the unique energy signature, and began attempting to find other signals that displayed heavy correlation with said energy signature. However, the alert that the data protection software sent to her by one of her drones drew her attention. She looked up at the source of the alert, seeing another vigilante on a hoverboard above her, and hearing the message patched through the drone. The drone that Lightning Bug had tossed away flew back to land on Lightning Bug's shoulder and began to speak in Eileen's voice, though Eileen's mouth wasn't moving. "Impressive! Thank you for exploiting this weakness in the system. It means my idea to have the encryption of my devices mapped to the neural network of my own brain is an idea worth pursuing. As well as completely switching to quantum optronics, which was in the works anyways. I hope you didn't find out too much information you're not supposed to, teehee! Anyways, you're definitely in! Come see me after all this is over, and I'll get you initiated."

Eileen smirked to herself. This fire was a gold mine, and she couldn't wait until the others involved here revealed themselves. She turned to Professor Devil and explained the trail that she was following and that she'd keep him updated. She also expressed that if he'd rather not deal with the inevitable slew of vigilantes that would approach him to either give a status report on the situation, attempt to make a name for themselves by schmoozing with him, or both; that she, as government liaison, would gladly handle it for him. After all, he was busy and couldn't be bothered by every vigilante out to get their fifteen minutes of fame.

David watched as several other vigilantes showed up on the scene to help stop the collapse of the burning building or prevent any civilian casualties. Nodding to himself slightly, David removed the bandanna from his face and stuffed it into his pants pocket as he pulled the deep gray hood he wore further over his face. Willing time to grind to a halt he stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets, turned away from the chaotic scene, which was eerily peaceful now that it was suspended in time, and calmly walked away. Now that other powered individuals had arrived and all the people had been moved from the buildings flaming interior, there was very little reason left for him to stay and help. The newcomers had this covered. No need for him to hang around any longer than was necessary.

Striding off down the street, and heading back in the direction of his apartment, David paused momentarily as he felt a shiver run down his spine. He wasn't exactly certain, but it felt as though someone was watching him. Something that shouldn't have been possible given the fact that time was stopped. The only other people who could be aware of his presence in a state like this were time manipulators like himself. But as far as he knew there weren't any others in this part of the city, which made the ever growing feeling of paranoia he was suddenly beset with even more unnerving. Quickly glancing at the surrounding area, David looked for anything out of the ordinary and, after a few minutes of searching, saw the dark outline of a figure wearing some kind of long, dark, coat leaning against the wall of a nail salon off to the right of the burning department store. And while he couldn't tell for sure, it seemed as though it was staring directly at him, almost as though it was committing his every move to memory for future use.

Narrowing his eyes slightly, David turned round to face it fully and took a few steps in its direction when the figure suddenly vanished into thin air. Blinking a couple of times, his mouth agape slightly, David stared at the area in which the figure had been standing a few seconds earlier, completely dumbfounded. It shouldn't have been possible for that person, whoever they were, to have done that without the ability to manipulate time. Yet they did. Which meant that there was at least one time controller in the city whose presence he had been completely oblivious to. And that wasn't even the most troubling part. The most troubling part was that this person's motives, desires, and reasoning was completely unknown to him. They could be anything from a self proclaimed hero to a ruthless and bloodthirsty villain with any number of contacts and connections both inside and outside of the city.

In other words, they were a complete wildcard. And one with what seemed to be a very keen interest in him at that.

Letting out a low growl through clenched teeth and thinly pressed lips, David once again turned away from the scene of the devastation and continued on his way home, his mind reeling as it tried to figure out this newcomer to the vigilante game. Picking up his pace to a slight jog, David released his hold on time once he was a few blocks away from the store, allowing it to flow freely once again as he stalked off down the street.

After the initial crash of the building collapsing behind her, Erika was expecting more crashes to follow, but they were staved off by the arrival of another vigilante. Eyes widening at Grim’s display, she couldn’t help but whisper, “Cool!” under her breath before diverting her attention elsewhere. With all the civilians evacuated from the building there wasn’t much more that her power would be helpful for regarding the fire, so she decided to make herself useful assisting the authorities in keeping the civilians at bay so that when the building does inevitably collapse they won’t accidentally be harmed by the resulting debris. She did make sure to keep her fangirling in her own mind after spotting Professor Devil talking to another woman out of the corner of her eye as well as focussing on the job at hand though.